from the bite-sized-culture dept

While it hasn't been done perfectly, I'm of the opinion that the literature world has handled the transition to the digital economy rather well. Perhaps they saw the recording industry trip over its own testicles so badly that they were able to learn from all the worst mistakes. The pricing, while probably not exactly right, far better mirrors consumer demand than what the music industry attempted for digital music initially. We're even seeing a quicker transition to DRM abandonement than I think we saw for music. All that being said, as much as is possible, the inevitable progression that recorded music followed into the digital realm continues with literature.

Amazon’s U.S. Kindle Singles store now contains 283 singles. In February, I reported that the company had sold 2 million Kindle Singles; as of September, that number was up to 3.5 million, and Amazon (AMZN) just expanded the program to the U.K., where it will include new entries by bestselling British authors as well as most of the American Kindle Singles. Many Byliner Originals are available through Kindle Singles, and they’ll be crossing the Atlantic for the first time with the program’s U.K. expansion.

Popularity of production aside, the other half of the coin is whether or not anyone actually buys these eSingles. Well, it turns out the sales of eSingle literature is a pretty decent mirror to the music singles market. In other words, they're selling pretty well. Several eSingles are hitting the best sellers list and authors tend to do quite well with them thanks to the friendly split distributors like Amazon take. Owen notes that because of the lower price of these singles, bigger publishing houses tend to not be as high on eSingles because the low price point means less on the profit margin, but that kind of misses the point. Much in the same way digital distribution lowered the barriers in music, so one would expect the same to occur in literature, meaning that eSingles may end up being less about publishers benefiting from them as much as new and/or what would otherwise be unheard of artists.

With all that said, it's the distributors of eSingles that are currently limited, but that isn't going to last for long. There's a ton of interest.

That could change next year as other digital bookstores pay more attention to the format. Apple (AAPL) has a separate section of the iBookstore for shorter reads. Barnes & Noble (BKS) launched Nook Snaps, a so-far unimpressive answer to Kindle Singles. Those efforts can give shorter works a promotional push. We could also see more companies, or individual authors, do a Kickstarter campaign to fund either a line of e-singles or just a single work. That’s what journalism startup Matter did.

What matters is that this is where publishing is going to go in the future, likely in a major way. Even the rise of the eBook helps eSingles make sense, given that anyone on a commute may wish to invest in a shorter read on their iPad than a longer novel. In any case, the end result will be more writing, more literature, and more culture, and that is a beautiful thing.

from the not-the-muckety-mucks dept

We just wrote about the rather insane process by which major record labels go through to pick which songs will be the "single" they promote off of an album. We focused on all the "protections" the labels try to build in to keep the songs from leaking while the execs make this wise decision -- but there's a separate issue as well: why is it that these execs are really the best at picking the hit single? The folks behind the "New Rockstar Philosophy" book point us to an article talking about Jason Mraz's hit song "I'm Yours," which you've almost certainly heard unless you live on a deserted island (if not, it's on YouTube of course). It's pretty catchy -- but the key point raised by the link above is that Mraz apparently didn't keep the song hidden and locked up until some bright execs could figure out the hit single (though, yes, he's been on a major label for years...). The article notes that he performed the song live for audiences for years before putting it on an album, and it was the audience response that made him realize it was a perfect hit single:

"The song was really born into the crowd. ... I noticed almost an immediate response to it and people really celebrated in a different way during that song," he said in a phone interview. "And then by having those three years to jam to the song, it gave us the opportunity to do something simple, yet spirited" in the studio.

And the song is doing quite well. The whole point of the article is to note that the song has the longest ever run on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Apparently sales of the song weren't "hurt" by the fact that people could hear it long before it was chosen as a single. In fact, it seemed to do just fine. So why do execs try to lock up that decision making process so much?

from the it's-not-going-to-make-people-buy-the-album dept

This is hardly a new phenomenon, but the Wall Street Journal is noting that some bands and some record labels are avoiding putting music on iTunes (or in some cases, pulling music off iTunes) in an effort to force people to buy the full album, rather than just a few tracks. There are plenty of reasons to dislike iTunes, but it seems hard to believe that this does anything positive for the bands in question. The article quotes Kid Rock's manager, who compares apples to oranges, by pointing out that people who are on iTunes sell more single songs than albums, but that's rather meaningless in comparing to an artist (like Kid Rock) who's not on iTunes at all. Not putting your music where people want it is only going to piss them off.

Hell, even record industry execs are getting frustrated by bands not having their singles anywhere that can be downloaded legally. And, yet, the sister record label to the one that employs the annoyed exec above is experimenting with an even more annoying proposition: pulling popular songs from iTunes after they've become popular, to see if it gets more people to buy the CD.

Honestly, is it really that hard to understand the concept of providing the customer what they want in a convenient manner?